Redefining Goods, Services, Sales, and Licences

This chapter looks at misconceptions about tangibility and intangibility and, in particular, the requirement of a physical object to distinguish whether commercial copies of copyright works are goods or services, and the ripple effects of that misconception on how courts construe sales and licences. This misconception has significant consequences for the regulation of information products and user rights thereto. Rather than somewhat arbitrary considerations based on the misconstrued effects of the presence of a physical object, factors including individuality, scarcity, physical control, and exclusivity should inform a more cohesive regulation of copyright user rights and be the determining factors to define copies of copyright works as goods, services, or sui generis.